Another Reason Emma Swan Shouldn't Be Allowed To Play With Time Spells
by inappropriatejoan
Summary: Swan Queen Week Day 3: Time Travel. Emma combines three wishes with the time spell after crashing Regina's Mercedes


Emma fell from the driver's seat and landed on her butt in the middle of the road. She scrambled, crab-like, backwards until she could take in the entire view before her.

Regina's Mercedes, the bonnet entirely crumpled back onto itself with smoke billowing from inside the chassis and the front axle obviously broken, was a mess. Emma's blood turned icy in her veins and a sharp stab of fear lanced through her chest. She simply stared for a few moments in abject horror, before covering her eyes and then looking again, praying that when she did the car would be returned to its pristine state. She scrambled to her feet, wracking her brain for a solution but nothing came to mind. Her mind crowded with images of Regina.

 _"Don't you even THINK of touching my car, Emma. I mean it."_

She imagined the murderous expression that would contort Regina's features, and nights spent cold and alone on the couch. She reached out with her magic, soothing it over smoking and warped metal, trying to coerce it back to its original configuration, to no avail. Far more panicked than she'd felt even when Cora tried to shove a hand in her chest, she disappeared in a cloud of white smoke.

###

Henry pushed open the front door to 108 Mifflin street, shrugging his backpack from his shoulder as he did so. He cocked his head, listening for signs of anyone who might be home. With his adoptive mother preparing her campaign for a second actually-elected term as mayor and his birth mother probably playing waste-basket basketball down at the Sherrif's station, it was unlikely anyone would be there, but he heard something shift in the study. Peering around the door he found Emma sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by magical paraphernalia - complete with some kind of diagram sketched on the floor in chalk - and a very familiar green vial.

"Emma?" he stepped into the room warily. "Whatcha doing?"

"Henry?" Emma looked up, her wide-open face in a rictus of guilt. "What are you doing home?"

"Uh, school finished half an hour ago. This is pretty much always the time I get home." He watched Emma's eyes dart nervously to the clock. He looked back down at the green vial. "Why do you have the, uh, time spell?"

Two years earlier, Regina and Merlin had captured the remaining essence of Zelena's time spell and used it to remove the Dark One's curse from Emma. The alterations they had made to it in order for it to work had rendered the remnants highly unstable, and before they had managed to capture it in the magically reinforced little green bottle, half the town's inhabitants had been nearly wiped from existence. It had been safely locked away in Regina's vault ever since.

Emma looked down at the bottle, and then back up at her fifteen year-old son. "I know this looks bad."

"It really does." Henry agreed.

"I know, but you need to understand, Hen, I'm kinda desperate."

"Oooookay..." Henry hadn't seen Emma this frantic since she had forgotten her and Regina's first anniversary. "Want to tell me why?"

"I-crashed-the-Mercedes-and-I-need-to-go-back-in-time-to-prevent-my-borrowing-it-in-the-first-place-before-your-mom-finds-out-and-divorces-me!"

And suddenly Henry understood Emma's desperation and panic. He stared at her wide-eyed and aghast. "You crashed the Mercedes?" He gasped. "Wait, you BORROWED the Mercedes? Oh my god, Emma! What were you thinking? You have to fix it! Fix it with magic, now, for all our sakes!"

"You think I didn't try?" Emma threw her hands in the air. "She put some kind of spell on it that was supposed to stop me from borrowing it. I thought I got around it, but now it's stopping me from fixing it!"

"But the time spell? That's all you can come up with? Seriously? Are you clinically insane?" Henry asked his mother. "You do remember what happened last time you went back to the past and changed something? The whole Marian thing? You're lucky Mom ever spoke to you again!"

"No, it's okay this time." Emma shook her head. "The spell I'm going to combine it with is a wish spell. It gives me three tries to get it right and if I don't, I can reverse it. So even if I randomly accidentally make it so that Regina never blamed Mary Margaret for Daniel's death, or that I was never sent through the wardrobe and end up under the curse as Mary Margaret's baby for thirty years, or even worse, that your mom and I never fell in love in the first place, I can undo it." Neither of them noticed the diagram chalked on the floor glow briefly. "Even I can't screw everything up like last time."

Logically, Henry knew that his blonde mother could screw up anything. She'd been known to set saucepans on fire trying to boil water. "If you mess this up, I'm telling the divorce court that I want to live with mom." He huffed eventually, and sat down on the couch. "How can I help?"

"Just go get the fire extinguisher from the kitchen and then stand back behind the couch."

###

With Henry in position, Emma stood over the diagram and uncorked the green vial. Her magic rushed through her, down her arms, wrists, and to her fingers. She managed to say the three word incantation before Regina's study slipped away from view and she was left hanging briefly in a black void, before she was rushed headlong into a new scene.

###

Emma was sat at a long wooden table in a massive stone room. Banners and tapestries covered the walls and a fire roared in a stone fireplace nearby. Gathered near her around the end of the table were her parents, dressed in what she recognised with a sinking feeling as the height of Enchanted Forest fashion. They also looked much older - possibly in their fifties - and behind Mary Margaret, with her hands on the shorter brunette's shoulders, stood an even older Regina, beaming disconcertingly from ear to ear.

"Happy Birthday, my sweet girl!" The inflection in Regina's voice was unique. She only used it when talking to Henry. As Emma watched in shock, Mary Margaret reached up and covered one of Regina's hands with her own.

"Thank you, Stepmother." Mary Margaret was smiling up at Emma's wife. And whilst Emma's jaw should have been dropping, her face was instead set in a fond smile. Disconcerted, she tried to raise her right hand to look at it, but it remained stubbornly on the table, and her gaze remained on her mother and the former Queen. Her body was simply not responding to her! Accordingly, she found herself rising and reaching out with open arms as Regina rounded the table towards her.

Familiar arms closed around her, but this embrace was different. Regina's pelvis was distant from her own, and whilst there was tender fondness in the moment, it was a familial clasp. "And you're looking more beautiful than ever, Emma!" Regina cooed.

"Thank you, Grandmother!" If she had been able, Emma's eyebrows would have raised to the ceiling and her eyes would have been as wide as saucers. Grandmother? Oh hell no!

Regina's strong fingers were pinching her cheeks firmly, and Emma's uncontrollable external expression was giggling and blushing. Internally, Emma felt the familiar blossom of arousal that she always felt when Regina touched her face, and under the current circumstances her mind simply shut down in horrified confusion. She slipped back into the empty void.

###

Everything seemed a little blurry, just kind of... less distinct. Above her were several indistinct blue shapes. Now her body was entirely wrapped in something, and she had as little luck in moving independently as she'd had before. She was really warm though. There was a faint melody nearby, as though someone was humming under their breath.

Suddenly an enormous face loomed above her, with terrifyingly monstrous green eyes and a bright slash of a mouth. "Hey there, baby. Are you awake for mommy?"Gigantic hands reached for her, curling behind her back and under her the voice registered. It was Mary Margaret!

"Are you hungry, Emma?" There was a dizzying, nauseating moment of vertigo and the huge Mary Margaret settled int a chair which seemed to tip back too far, and Emma, with no control over her movements, thought she might tumble helplessly to the floor. There was movement at her eye level, one of the enormous hands seemed to unfastening something and she was suddenly face-to-face with the biggest boob she'd ever seen...

"Aaaaaaaaargh!" Emma arrived internally screaming back in limbo, her eyes squeezed tightly shut but the moment forever seared into her brain. "Oh god, oh god, oh god!" A vortex opened behind her eyes and she spun back into oblivion.

###

And suddenly, she was facing a very familiar scene. Dark energy roared through the main street of Storybrooke, the stomach-curdling stench of black magic filled her nostrils. Gold lay on the ground some feet away, tended by Belle. Her parents were slightly behind and to the right of her, and wrapping his arms around her tightly was Killian Jones. Directly in front of her, tendrils of black magic surrounded Regina and lifted her to her toes. Her familiar and beloved dark eyes were filled with heart-wrenching terror and despair as the curse of the Dark One forced its way into her soul.

And whilst Emma remained steady in Hook's arms, it felt as though her heart and mind were splitting in two. One part of her watched sadly, but with a sense of righteous finality, believing that this had always been Regina's fate. She felt a pang of regret for the moment of lightness that had been the past year in Regina's otherwise dark and misspent life, as she watched all remnants of light Regina washed away by the curse.

The other part of her - the part that belonged in the future - saw her beloved wife, her True Love. Unbearable fear and torment tore through her soul and would have propelled her into the whirlwind to rescue the brunette, but this Emma's body paid as little heed to her desires as the previous two had. She screamed in despair and was sucked away back into the blissfully empty void.

###

Emma landed facedown on the study floor with a thump, impacting her right shoulder and ribs.

"Ma?" Henry slid from the couch and fell to his knees beside her, one hand reached out hesitantly to help her.

Emma gasped for breath, unable to move, even as she heard heels making their way rapidly through the foyer. The door flew open and Regina hurried in, concern etched on her features.

"Emma? Are you alright?" she stopped to take in the magic debris littering the floor around her still prone wife. "Emma?"

Emma managed to rise to a sitting position, Henry helping her with a scared expression. "I'm so sorry, babe. I stole the time spell after I crashed your car and I couldn't fix it and..."

"Wait! You crashed my car?" Regina's arms reached out and Emma shrank back in fear of the undoubtedly excruciating magical punishment that was surely coming her way.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" Emma's gaze rose to meet the brunette's in confusion. "What? Yeah, I suppose, but the Mercedes..."

Regina wrapped her arms around her and pulled her into a fierce embrace. "I don't give a damn about the Mercedes, Emma. It can be replaced - you can't! I love you, you idiot!"


End file.
